SUMMARY
Gambling has gone through considerable changes during recent decades with new forms of gambling, increased turnover, and increasingly extensive marketing of different modes of gambling. At the same time, the monopolistic structure of state-controlled gambling has been questioned by media and private actors on national and European Union (EU) levels. The focus has increasingly ended up on legal interpretations of the possibilities of and the obstacles for state regulation, which has recently placed Nordic gambling monopolies under scrutiny. The purpose of this article is to clarify the legal arrangements for gambling in the Nordic countries and also how the different countries have chosen to react to increased pressure for deregulation of this area. The article describes how gambling is regulated in the five different countries and analyses what parts of the legal framework of the EU are a threat to the existing gambling systems in these countries.